Weeknotes of Adrián Ortega, content designer at the Centre for Digital Public Services in Wales.

⬅️ Read my previous weeknotes

• This week things wound down a bit after a few intense weeks: too many meetings, many social-but-somehow-work events, too much to do and too little time. My weeknotes are slowly becoming monthnotes, but I guess some are better than none, right? RIGHT?

• Some things that happened in previous weeks:

  • All-hands (2 weeks ago): an opportunity to hang out with my favourite people, meet some people in the flesh for the first time and learn they’re shorter or taller than I thought, and play gen-z mini golf. Shame I didn’t get to catch up with everyone, there wasn’t enough time. All in all, it was fun: 8/10 I would recommend.
  • Hackathon with Cwmpas: another fun day - kinda weird how this pose emerged organically with just a few exceptions including grumpy me with my arms crossed.

• This week, we started testing service manual content with users. It’s 3 pages on considerations to make when you’re researching with Welsh-language users:

  • Considering the Welsh language in your research
  • Before starting to do Welsh-language research
  • Planning your Welsh-language research

• We also discussed the possibility of reducing the service manual MVP to be able to go live earlier, so that’d be pretty exciting if it works out well.

• Getting the prototype ready bilingually last week felt both a marathon and a sprint. I ran a reviewing session with the User research in Wales community leads who I’m working with on this content. They sounded really pleased with the result so far which is great because I’ve actually worked quite a lot on it.

• As we were pressed for time, I also invited the translator and the user researcher who’s testing this content with users. Being part of the conversation gave them (I hope) a good understanding of the information, its context and any design decisions taken so they were better equipped to translate and test it.

• I always try to find ways to work together - and replace ‘meetings’ and ‘handing over’ with working sessions - as I believe it saves time, effort and stress in the long run - and to be honest, it’s more fun considering we work remotely. I usually work with an interaction designer in Figma, and this time I invited our translator to join us so she could translate things directly in the prototype. It was her first time using it, but in no time she was editing stuff with us.

• I started writing a blog post for the CDPS website about different ways to involve translators in the content production process and collaborate with them beyond trio writing.

• I attended the first event of Tech for Good Cymru organised by the nice people from Promo Cymru. I met interesting new people, and was surprised to see a few familiar faces. An exciting initiative I’ll keep an eye on to see how it progresses.